


Recovery

by Merixcil



Series: Whumptober 2019 [30]
Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26375494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Tahani struggles to readjust to the easy life
Relationships: Tahani Al-Jamil & Eleanor Shellstrop, Tahani Al-Jamil/Eleanor Shellstrop
Series: Whumptober 2019 [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838356
Kudos: 8





	Recovery

Overhead, Tahani watches the shadows of the leaves outside her window paint the ceiling in fractured shadows. It reminds her of the wallpaper her good friend Gwyneth Paltrow used to decorate her second bathroom in her fifth beach house back in two thousand and six. That had been a nice beach house, secluded, private. They used to have parties on the dock, minus all the alcohol and sugar and gluten and other nonsense that was oh so bad for you. Nothing but clean eating at those little soirees. And yoga by the light of the setting sun. God, hadn’t they all been such self righteous pricks. 

Tahani sits up, carrying the duvet with her and looks towards the window, with it’s curtains thrown open so that the sun might personally accuse her of overstaying her welcome in bed. The clock on the wall says it’s seven in the morning, but that thing is a ferocious liar and a yes man who only tells her what she wants to hear. 

On the windowsill, Eleanor is sat, a thick book open in her lap and her hair in disarray as she stuffs ever more pencils into it. It’s her standard move when she’s trying very hard to concentrate but can’t quite manage it. Next to her, she has a copy of today’s trashy gossip rags, already lined up for when she eventually caves with the book. 

Perhaps assuming she will cave is uncharitable, but it does seem to be the way of things. It’s nice, Tahani thinks, that after everything she’s still trying to engage with Chidi’s lessons. 

Eleanor pauses, her eyes zeroing in on part of the page. Her mouth starts flapping, trying to trace the sound of a difficult word. She goes at it for a while before sitting back, evidently bored with her task, and at last she sees Tahani. 

Eyes wide, smile immediately five hundred watts brighter. “You’re awake!”

“I suppose.” Tahani scowls, still not committed to leaving her bed. She feels like her dear acquaintance Yoko Ono must have done when she spent that week taking a nap with her husband John for peace. Only it came out afterwards that John hadn’t been a very nice man, and while Tahani appreciates that she’s never been overly artistically minded, she thinks that the benefits of sleeping off the military industrial complex ought to be a little more obvious. 

Eleanor brushes the book aside without another word, dashing across the room excitedly to drop onto the the bed next to Tahani. “Well, we better get you out of that duvet soon, buddy! We have a whole day of afterlife to explore.”

It’s not a real day, it’s all fabricated for their perfect enjoyment. Tahani nods towards the clock. “What time is it really?”

“Well, see.” Eleanor settles herself, eyes flicking upwards like they always do when she is reciting something she’s learned but hasn’t totally internalised yet. “Time is relative, in the real world, that is. Here it’s just Jeremy Bearimy, but the human mind can’t really process time the way the demons and the angels do, so instead we sort of get to make our own time up.” She beams, like she’s answered the question perfectly. 

Tahani sighs. “Which means?”

“It means it’s whatever time you want it to be, babe!”

Whatever she wants, whenever she wants it. It doesn’t feel so different from being back on Earth, only now she doesn’t have to interact with her parents, or Kamilah, though she supposes eventually they’ll show up as well and Lord knows that’s going to be an awkward conversation. Knowing them they will take one look at all the opportunity offered to her here and turn up their noses at the big pile of diddly and squat she has managed to produce in response. 

Kamilah, in The Place. She’s going to thrive. 

“I want time to be consistent and to give me some sense of progress to mark my days by.” Tahani tells the clock, forcefully. But it’s still seven in the morning. 

Eleanor smirks. “Looks like that might not be the case.”

“Oh shut up.” Tahani pokes her in the side, and Eleanor hits back with a prod to her armpit, and then somehow it dissolves into a tickle fight and they are both entangled in Tahani’s duvet on the floor. 

“Uncle! Uncle!” Eleanor screeches, when Tahani gets a good grip on her arms and starts running her hands over Eleanor’s belly. They both let go and fall back, and though the sun is bright outside and it’s nearly always summer here (unless it’s picturesque winter with thick snow and ice skating ponds, or autumn days that are cool but not cold with all the leaves in vibrant reds and oranges, or the first day of spring) it’s not too warm to be snuggled up together like this. 

“Is this what every day is going to be like?” Tahani mumbles, relaxing her grip on Eleanor but keeping her close in a loose hug. 

“Like what? Endless time in paradise to do whatever we want? I sure hope so.”

“No, I mean, there’s no structure to it. No purpose.”

“You didn’t have much purpose while you were alive.” Tahani prods Eleanor in the side again for that. “What? You’re the one who’s always saying that you didn’t get to be more than a party planner.”

“I know.” Tahani concedes. “But these past few years, or centuries, or however long it’s been since we died, I’ve had something to work towards. The Good Place, The Bad Place, breaking the cycle. That all felt so important compared to spa days and ice cream twenty four seven.”

“So what, you want to go back to getting chased by demons and knowing that the fate of all mankind was on your shoulders? Not my idea of fun.” Eleanor rolls over, resting a hand on Tahani’s shoulder. “Give it a rest, sugar. We’re here, we won. We earned our afterlife.”

“I thought we agreed that no one should have to earn a decent afterlife.”

“You know what I mean.”

Tahani nods, smiling slightly despite herself. At least here she has friends, and people to be impressed by her. And this new neighbourhood gets so many new people in, daily even, that it’s never a bad time to throw one of her patented welcome parties. But the days are starting to blur into one and try as she might, Tahani can’t envisage a good enough obstacle to add a bit of spice back into her existence. The fun has even gone out of flying, now she knows she has uninhibited access to it. 

“I think it’s like.” Tahani starts slowly, watching Eleanor to make sure she understands that this is a complex thought and not to be interrupted. “When my former best friend, Coleen McLoughlan’s husband, Wayne Rooney, injured his hamstring, and he couldn’t play football for a few months and, as a professional athlete, it totally shifted his priorities. Coleen said he was more present in the home and he was better with the children and he even learned to cook. But when he went back to work he still wanted to do all those things, and he tried to find ways to get them done but he was dreadfully busy and couldn’t reconnect with that side of himself very easily. I think, in fighting for the rights of all humans to not be tortured from beyond the grave, I discovered parts of myself that I don’t want to lose. In recovering from the person I used to be, I’m finding it rather hard to recover my joy for the person I used to be.”

Eleanor pauses, watching her to be sure that she’s finished talking. Then she nods, she thinks about it, she comes back with a smile. “What about mountain climbing?”

“What?” Tahani frowns. 

“You know, big mountain. We climb it, with no help from any magical unicorns or from the flying pad. We go up by ourselves. And then, when we’re at the top, no one can say that we haven’t done something. It’s not quite as good as saving the world, but it’s not planning parties all day either.”

Using muscles that she’s never had much cause to use before. Sure, she won’t hurt tomorrow morning like she would have done if she had done it in the real world, but it does sound more fun than swanning around the house all day indulging in wonders she already had full access to when she was alive.

“We would need to wake up awfully early to climb a mountain in a day.” Tahani says, but she’s already pulling herself out of the duvet. Excited to try something, excited to maybe hate it. 

“Don’t sweat it.” Eleanor retorts, clambering to her feet and offering Tahani a hand up. “We’re in The Place. It’s whatever time we want it to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'whumptober' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have
> 
> Comments on the previous posting of this fic (just ask if you want me to remove yours) include:  
> >morspraematura: I support your perspective of The Place, and that people shouldn't earn a decent afterlife. I feel like if the show goes for that, they will have done well. Also, thank you for choosing Eleanor x Tahani for this, it's sad the lack thereof in the show and how little fics this fandom has. You laid out one important conundrum about an afterlife in this scenario, I didn't expect to find myself this hooked on reading, and I thank you because there was even some fluff in this piece.  
> >>Merixcil: I'm really hoping that the show manages to find a good conclusion - it feels like there's so little time left to get there though! The idea of the afterlife being neutral and what you make of it is, I think, the best possible outcome, but we'll see what goes down in the end  
> >>>morspraematura: Yes, I also feel there's so little time left! I'm hopeful, because the cast has describe the end as "satisfiying", so I look forward to find out how they'll conclude.


End file.
